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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Holy-unholy

A strike difference between any so called Maha gurus, godmens and Christ came to my mind when I was going through the below passage in Bible. Which can be found in “The women subject to bleeding” (Luke 8:40-48, Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:22-43). Below is the passage from the book of Luke.

Luke 8:43-48

43 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years,but no one could heal her. 44 She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.

45 “Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.”

46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”

47 Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. 48 Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

And I found it fascinating to know that in the culture from where this story is told, they were jews and they had so many laws given to them and the society revolved around the culture most likely here in India where we have priests and teachers of the Religious texts and we live under the laws taught by them. As ours is a gender biased society we look down at women so was in that culture. And therefore we see author have mentioned that Nameless woman dare not to come and seek help from Jesus because she was afraid of the society and the culture and what they will think of or perhaps she will be rebuked and thrown away. And yet inspite of all that she had faith that if she just touches the cloak of Jesus she will be healed and same happened and that too we see author mentions immediately.

It is one the greatest miracle of healing I ever read but more than that I see attitude of Jesus that follows after this event. He asks who touched Him? And before reading the further verses I thought what the woman must have thought, surely now He will rebuke me, He will take away all the healing as I stole it or He will punish me because I, an unclean women who have such deadly disease have touched a Holy man like Him. And surely I would have scared to death of people condemning me for such act. Yet we read that the woman came to Jesus’ feet trembling and she told what had happened. And is just Marveled at the reply of Jesus, instead of all that we thought He called her Daughter. Nothing else but daughter, a closest word coming from Father’s mouth. And He said your faith has healed you and God in peace.

In Indian context I was reminded of my personal encounter of one the well known gurus in Maharashtra. He was a well known priest or religious teacher I have not collected much information about him but I knew this much he is a guru, a servant of god as they called him. And we were all there on a visit to a well known temple there and we got a privilege to meet this man and we were told he will just offer us some blessing. Here in our culture blessing is offered if we respect the person just by touching his feets and he putting his hand on our forehead. So I thought as usual we do this to every elder we meet as part of our culture we are told to respect them without knowing why? So we were all in a line and were to go in line and take blessing. As we went one by one I thought what kind of culture we have but then continued and as my turn came I went forward to touch his feet but as I bent down I was warned not to physically touch him, I was amazed why they did so. Later I asked my friends and teacher about it and I learned he is holy man who have done a lot of chanting and other worship related stuff and maintained himself unblemish and I was literally shocked to hear that if we touch him we will make him unholy. And I hated the very idea that how one man can be made unholy by mere touch. Imagine a doctor not treating the patient saying oh! how ugly germ ridden body he have and yet I would say he some how justifies what he do but how can a man be defiled by mere touch.

And I see a stark difference between gurus, godmen and my Lord Jesus. His grace, compassion, mercy are not just recorded in books but He actually lived that live and He himself never wrote a single piece of article because He was busy healing sick, giving sight to blind, preaching and proclaiming the good news. And all that Father have told Him to do. It is by action we know our Lord Jesus came on earth because of us. And scripture says “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” - 2 Corinthians 5:21

Think of it Son of God became Man so that son of man can be reconciled with God and become adopted sons of God.

P.S. A better look to the story(The women subject to bleeding) can be found at http://donotdepart.com/trembling-faith